Metriacanthosaurus

OMG just get a laptop.

The mouse cursor support is an Accessibility feature. It is not meant as a primary input method. Expectedly, it is very clunky, which is why it is there for accessibility... not for people who insist on making the iPad into a laptop.

sflocal said:

Waiting for haters like sjworld to chime (whine) in and tell us all why the XDR (and stand) is an overpriced POS. 

No amount of real-world validations by actual pros will convince these wannabes that this will implode the $40k reference monitor industry.

It is of course not overpriced. It is just a shame they don't offer a worse display, for less.

bulk001 said:

Apart from higher prices what benefits will 5G actually bring most customers? 

Zero.

This yet another rinse repeat on the part of carriers to avoid becoming utilities who's prices continuously go down.

Nothing meaningful has changed in cellular data since 3G. Coverage is still poor. Data is still heavily limited and throttled. It's very expensive. People still use it as little as possible for as few tasks as possible.

5G is nothing but greed, and them outing themselves on what their intentions are.

3G
4G
LTE

- None of these networks ever reached a respectable coverage/distribution before being abandoned for the next thing.
- None of these ever reached anywhere near theoretical speeds before being abandoned for the next thing.

What we should be doing is firming up LTE (after all it is called LONG TERM EVOLUTION) and increasing coverage, increasing capacity to reach closer to peak speeds. Lowering prices so that it becomes something reasonable.

But the carriers have no interest in that, as they see it as the end of the charade they've been engaged in for the last decade. 

Mike Wuerthele said:

gbdoc said:

With all due respect to the authors, I don’t understand the need for articles like this, explaining/defending the price of the Mac Pro. Sure, it’s interesting to see what’s in it and what it can do. But the price issue is pointless. Is a Rolls-Royce or a Lamborghini worth the price? Or, perhaps more to the point, a Formula One car? If you have that kind of need and that kind of money, the answer’s clearly yes, the Mac Pro is probably great for that group of users. But that group is miniscule. For everybody else this is no more than a showcase machine, like Mercedes F1 cars. If Mercedes cars win, the company probably sells more of their normal cars.

And here’s the hitch. Apple’s made this Mac Pro, but where are products for the rest of us? Most computer users are in the Chevy, Honda, or Mercedes group. I bet there’s not even one appleinsider or MacRumors reader who needs the Mac Pro. We’d love to buy great Macs (computers, not iPads!), from entry-level up to our kind of pros. But Apple has stopped making them. What they make is disappointing and overpriced.

So this begs the question: why did Apple make a come-on machine (which probably adds nothing meaningful to their bottom line) when they offer nothing to come on to? Will their next Pro machine be a Mac Quantum? And when they do, will there be arguments about the price? Will they think that most of us will be thrilled?

If everybody understands what you do about where the machine fits, what it is, and what it is not, then there wouldn't have been a need to do so. But, like you've read in the thread, and have discussed in your own post, there is a strange conflation in discussions about it with Apple not making what they want, and the price of this machine.

The two are different topics.

What's so wrong with wanting Apple to sell a version of this Mac Pro that comes with much lower spec internals? The machine is modular and meant to be upgraded, yet they started it so far out of range of the majority of professionals, for no other reason than to avoid cannibalizing their own lower priced Pro products.

What is inherently good about a modular system in the first place? It can be upgraded. Why is upgrading good? Because it is cheaper than buying a new machine. Cheaper options that let people get more out of a machine for longer are more appreciated by people with less money.

There is something that does not compute about a modular, upgradable system...that starts at $6K. This machine should start at $2400, and be equipped with Mac Mini internals. Pros can buy it as is, and upgrade components one at a time over several years to build up to a $6K system. That's what this is all about.

This also, by the way, doesn't stop them from offering the exactly same $6K model to the exact same people that they already do.

it's not that it is "overpriced" for what is included, the problem is what is included.

There is absolutely nothing that prevents Apple from offering lower spec'd entry level models that people can upgrade over time, except the most heinous corporate greed known to man.